For Freddie Mercury's birthday last year, the Pirate and I provided a suggested list of things to do to celebrate, and the following entry was on the list:
-Avoid public transport by selling your drummer's fur coat and taking a cab.
This was inspired by a story I had read in a book about Queen. The story was that Freddie had once sold Roger's coat (when they had a stall together at Kensington Market) so he would have money for cab fare. I took this to be true, because I naturally assumed that someone writing a book about the greatest band ever would have bothered to check their facts. Apparently, this is not necessarily the case.
I recently purchased another Queen book, and in this version of the story it is Roger who sold Freddie's coat, and told him it was for cab fare. (The part of the story that remained the same is that Freddie didn't like public transport.) Since my newest book (Queen: As It Began) was written with the co-operation of Queen and has an introduction by Brian May, I am going to assume that this is the more credible source.
So while I still think it is perfectly acceptable to avoid public transport by selling your drummer's fur coat and taking a cab in honor of Freddie Mercury, Freddie himself never actually did that. While this is a reasonably small error, it is still an error, and lying about Freddie Mercury (even if it is accidental) is no way to pay tribute.